


Closer

by moonshaunted



Series: DriftEris Drabbles [5]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Game: Destiny 2: Beyond Light DLC, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Non-Canon Relationship, They're In Love Your Honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 15:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonshaunted/pseuds/moonshaunted
Summary: Drifter visits Eris on Europa and has a revelation he'll have to figure out how to deal with.
Relationships: The Drifter/Eris Morn
Series: DriftEris Drabbles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203638
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Closer

**Author's Note:**

> It's time for some thoughts and feeeeeelings OOHH 👀  
> Might I recommend 'Together Forever' by Olivier Deriviere and 'The Space Between Us' by Really Slow Motion to listen to while reading this, since I listened to these while writing and editing and, uh, cried a lil. So.

Space is vast, and cold, and dark. This is not unknown. But to truly understand how vast, how cold, and how dark, it takes a while. Years, ages, floating place to place through it, in it, around it. Drifting.

Drifting. Adrift. That's who he was, what he was, one particle of dust in the vast cosmic realm, travelling through the vacuum, endlessly it felt. Deaths upon deaths and still he kept waking up, opening his eyes once again to see the vast, cold, dark. Always there. Unchanged time and time again, every new life it waited for him to come out and be in it, staring back at him with a void face pricked with distant starlight. A path, a highway, a home, a wilderness. There, always there. Oppressively lonely.

He floated in silence, looking out the window of his ship. Once again the artificial gravity core had fizzled out, and this time he wasn't rushing to try and fix it. He was near Jupiter, its bright face just peeking in the corner of his view as he faced away from the planet, out into space. The low rumble of his ship was familiar and comfortable, a staple in the ambience of the last however many years of his painfully long life, and he listened to it now as his gaze shifted from one distant star to another, taking in the darkness between. How many times had he looked at these stars, at this space. He didn't know.

The quiet crackle of the radio broke his reverie. A choppy voice was attempting to hail him, broken up by static. He grabbed the headrest of his console chair and pulled himself to the helm, giving the receiver a good whack, and the voice clarified.

"Drifter? Are you coming down?"

It was Eris. The deep nuance of her voice was lost over the radio waves.

Drifter looked out the window again for a moment before grabbing the radio and holding it up to his lips.

"Yeah, Eris, I reckon I should. Artificial grav's shut off, again, might need to do some repairs while I'm there."

Eris scoffed. "I'm surprised you still put effort into that ship of yours, if you can even call it that."

"Hey now, the Derelict runs just fine! Most of the time, anyway."

The muffled sound of a quiet laugh crackled through the radio. Drifter smiled.

"Let me know when you land."

"Aye aye, sister."

Europa was a deep blue marble against the swirling backdrop of Jupiter. An icy moon. Drifter didn't rejoice at the sight, rather he shivered, anticipating the biting wind. It was a bitter place to be, and he was glad the Guardians were there taking care of business so he didn't have to be. Eris kept him in the loop of any of the latest findings from the Stranger, and they all met there when necessary. He felt a wave of a strange sort of wistfulness, remembering the long nights spent on that moon with the two of them, early on in their vigil of the strange pyramid. It felt… good, in a way, to have a sort of fireteam again, but it was short lived, and to be honest he didn't miss the far reaching gaze of the Exo Stranger. She always looked at him curiously, a mix of nostalgia, and, perhaps, pity. It bothered him on a good day and drove him mad on a bad one, but she was never unkind, and so he couldn't help but feel it rash to make an enemy of her for any reason. No, despite it all, he was always eager to hear what she had to say, and liked to listen.

Eris was something else. He had known her briefly, on a surface level, through talk and vague interaction before they joined forces when the Darkness made itself known. She was as cold and distant as the stars, but as they worked together he found himself surprisingly comfortable around her. And then they found themselves on Europa with the Stranger keeping vigil for a few months, and he got to know her in a different way. He had joked that he and Eris were more alike than she would like to admit, but the more she opened up the more it struck him how true that actually was. Over pitiful meals around the fire she had let leak more than a few details of her past, her story, and he thought maybe she too liked feeling part of a fireteam again. A few times he offered to warm her hands with some Solar energy, seeing her bundled up to the nines out in the frozen wastes, Lightless as she was. She didn't accept for a long time. But one evening as they were switching out watches, the Stranger off on a mission she wouldn't speak about, Eris asked him to use his Light for her. She was shivering next to the dying fire, looking out at the Pyramid, and he sat down next to her, relieving her of her watch, but she didn't move. Instead she leaned into him somewhat, and in a small voice asked if he could warm her up. He bit his tongue, a snide remark just asking to be made, but she sounded tired in a way he hadn't heard before. So without remark he conjured up some Solar energy and let it flow through him, and she sat close to him and her shivering diminished.  _ It was nice to feel close to the Light _ , she had said when she eventually got up to go sleep, and thanked him.

It was a few weeks after that, without prior discussion, that she entered his jumpship in the middle of another blustery night, and they fell in together, in a way. It was unexpected, her being so closed off and mysterious, but it was not unwelcome, and her body was warm and soft and pleasurable during those long cold nights. Drifter couldn't say how long it had been, felt a little off his game at first, but he guessed Eris was in the same way as they got used to each other. It wasn't anything deep, just two folks doing what comes natural, and enjoying another warm body. It was a pleasant arrangement, one that they had made good upon several times now since ending their vigil on Europa, and it made him feel a childish stir of anticipation when he thought about it. He didn't know what to make of that.

"I'm here," Drifter said over the radio as he brought his jumpship to rest a ways from the camp. The Derelict he had set in a high orbit above the moon before floating his way into his jumpship to make the trip down to the surface, taking with him some parts of the defunct artificial gravity core.

"The Stranger is away with the Guardian at the moment," Eris replied, her voice clearer now through the comms. The statement hung in the air, an unasked question. Drifter scratched his beard. He couldn't help but smile.

"You called me down early," he said.

He heard Eris clear her throat. "Perhaps I did."

"Ha ha! Moondust, you make me blush. Should I--"

The clatter of the hatch opening cut him off, and he sprung to his feet, his hand on his gun. But it was Eris's bundled form that came in, and he let out a hearty laugh.

"Eager, I see! You really miss old Drifter that much?" he teased, swaggering over to her. She unclasped her cloak and undid her outer layers, hanging them up on a protrusion from the bay wall next to the door. When she turned to him a vague smile was on her lips.

"You think too highly of yourself," she said, brushing past him to the door to his quarters.

"Ooh ouch, that hurts," he replied as he followed her, putting a hand to his chest and mocking a grimace. "There's that mean streak."

Eris let out a short breath of a laugh, shaking her head. 

"I doubt you would actually want to see me be mean," she said, unclasping and unlacing her armor and setting it down carefully on the messy table in the jumpship's small sleeping quarters. She slipped the wrap from her head and ran a hand through her short hair.

"You mean all those times out there with those Fallen, you were being  _ nice _ by blowing their brains out?" Drifter shrugged out of his shirt and kicked his pants to the floor.

"No, but I wasn't acting out of any sort of real malice, just doing what needed to be done to survive, and help the Guardian."

They crawled into the cozy bunk.

"Well then," Drifter said, kissing her, "I guess maybe I don't want to see you bein' mean, remind me to not get on your bad side."

Eris let out a small hum. "I can't promise anything, and neither can you. But for now…" she trailed off as Drifter's lips wandered down her body.

They were both quiet as they pleasured each other, the only sound their heavy breaths and small moans. It was slow and pleasant, unbothered, untethered, blissful. Strangely so, in a way. A different kind of passion than ones they'd shared before.

Afterward, after taking turns having a quick, cold rinse in the tight bathroom of the ship, they ended up back in the bunk, laying together. Eris was propped up on a pillow and Drifter was on his side next to her, one arm around her waist, and they were quiet for a long time. The mood had shifted, and suddenly a lot of thoughts the Drifter didn't like were running through his head, and he was pushing them aside as fast as he could. He would think about it later. He just wanted to enjoy this now.

He felt Eris put her hand on his head and he stiffened, but slowly she began to run her thin fingers through his hair, and he, somewhat against his will, relaxed, letting the pleasant little shivers run down his spine. A wave of exhaustion rolled over him.

"Can I trust you to not kill me in my sleep?" he asked, breaking the calm silence. "At least right now? 'Cause I'm feelin' a nap, and it'd be inconvenient to have to fight you now."

Eris's other hand came to rest on his forearm that laid across her waist.

"I have no intentions of harming you, now or in the near future that I can see, if that brings any sort of comfort to someone as fearful as you." Her voice was laced with a sort of sadness, palpable in the quiet. Drifter stared ahead, gazing at the tight woven fibers of Eris's shirt, the fuzz on the edges of the cloth that caught the angled light coming into the space. A thought he had been fighting blossomed brightly in his mind and filled him with a chill dread that turned his stomach. It  _ was _ comforting, because he did trust her, her word. He cared. He cared about her, what she thought and what she did, if she was here or elsewhere, if she lived. Or died. He hated it. The faded memories of the pain of loss and grief, over and over again throughout his long life, washed over him now, and he hated it. An unconscious instinct drove an invasive thought through his mind; end it, somehow, her or him or both, a knife, a gun, a shouting match, a burst of Void energy. Something. Something to protect himself from yet another notch on the long list of tragedies that fueled his fear. He clenched his fist, gripping a handful of Eris's shirt and the blanket draped over them.

"Eli?" Eris said. He flinched at this, snapping his head up to look at her. Her lips were parted and trembling, her nostrils flaring slightly.

"Don't call me that," he said, somewhat harsher than intended. "Don't… call me that, please." He softened. "I don't know which part of my brain you dug that old name out of, but it should be left there."

Eris was quiet. "What would you like me to call you, then?"

Drifter settled back down, pulling himself closer to her and squeezing his eyes shut, banishing the chaos in his mind. He took a deep breath in through his nose.

"Whatever you want. Just not that."

She let out a pent up sigh and sniffed. Silence fell again, tension dissipating, and Drifter let the waves of exhaustion overtake him. He fell into a dim, dreamless, but welcome sleep.

He was awakened a while later by Eris whispering in his ear.

"I think the Stranger is returning soon with the Guardian."

Drifter groaned and sat up, rubbing his face.

"Ah, s'pose we should get out there then, see what the latest disaster is." He slid off the bunk and began putting on his socks. Eris sat on the edge of the bed and was quiet. Drifter paused and looked up at her.

"You alright?"

She frowned slightly, then reached out and with a painful tenderness took his face in her hands.

"Your pain is more obvious than you think," she said. "And… I share in your trepidation. It's - It is difficult to have people you care about, because that means you feel their loss when they are gone. I am intimately familiar with this."

"Eris," Drifter said, feeling his cheeks grow warm, "I ain't no good with ooey-gooey-feelings-talk, since I  _ really _ try not to have 'em. Because you're right, it hurts. And when you've been around as long as I have, you hurt a lot, even when you try not to. I'm not saying it makes any damn sense but it's part of being human - heh, if we can even call ourselves that anymore."

He came closer to her and sighed.

"I hate it. Traveler's Light, I hate it. But, I don't hate you, least not yet."

Eris cracked a small smile at this.

"I don't hate you either, at least not yet," she replied. 

He smiled and grabbed her hand, turning his face to kiss her palm, and then stood up and fetched his coat, flinging it over his shoulders. Eris got up and he helped her back into her armor and layers of cold weather clothes, and they walked out of the jumpship together to go wait at the camp. They got a quick fire going, and Drifter made himself busy with one of the broken elements of the Derelict's gravity core he had brought down while Eris went through some transmissions from the Vanguard. The cold wind of the blue moon blew past them, filling the settled silence, and far above them the vast, cold, dark of space felt just a little further away.

  
  



End file.
